Paz-manian Devil

The duty nurse who brought me from emergency to my third floor room at Sturdy Hospital gave me the first warning that I might not hit it off well with Dr. Paz. I had stated clearly that I wanted no resuscitation or mechanical means of being kept alive. The nurse was clear that Paz did not approve of those decisions with people as young as myself. I made it clear that no one else should be making quality of life decisions for me.
Let’s be real here: if I were a blind dog with a lame leg, many compassionate owners would put me down.
Doctor Paz avoided the issue when I brought it up directly to him the next morning. I repeated my wishes clearly. The conversation did not last long for a completely different reason. The prednisone prescribed still for recovery from the retina reattachment surgery gave me one of those sudden, empty-stomach surges of stomach acid. Paz stood by in a useless frozen panic as I asked for a bedpan, He disappeared during the ensuing confusion and I did not see him until the next morning.
I did, however, feel his presence and influence. I hade listed all medications upon arrival, and despite my insulin regimen of 25 units of N and 5 of R, Paz decided to prescribe a course of treatment that completely eliminated the time release insulin in favor of reliance only on the "instant" R at mealtimes. I went more than 24 hours without any time release insulin, and the nurses did not seem to fully understand how the different insulins works or that it is a dangerous to willy nilly change the entire philosophy nod treatment of a diabetic, particularly one whose sugar will be off due the an infection. I asked for time release insulin with each shot they gave at meals.
I got a shot of only time release around 8 PM that Saturday, with a snack of graham crackers and pudding (which doesn’t sound diabetic-recommended to me either) but with NO R Insulin. An hour later, the nurse took my blood sugar yet again and was in an uproar that it was now higher.
They has given me food without any instant insulin when my body contained no residual time release insulin. Of course the snack hit the blood sugar long before the time release insulin had effect. I had to explain this more than three times to a nurse. My hospital roommate understood it long before the nurse did.
For the life of them, the staff was also not able to get my course of eye drops correct over the entire weekend. I was being pumped with various antibiotics and heparin. I had been bed-bound even to the exclusion of a shower or bath even though I was mobile, just slow and blind. I was being poked and bled out in various ways several times per day in different ways. No one could tell me what type of infection I had contracted. It had taken me all day to break the staff of their habit of putting the never-rinsed portable urinal on my food table. The doctor had not returned since that morning, when he had stood by uselessly unable to find a bedpan.
Day Two under his care at Sturdy would be different, but no better.